An Intro For Mental Omega

Hello everyone, I'll start off with a brief introduction of myself then I'll move straight to business.

My name is NoSpoons or just Spoons and I'm new to the forums, I'm a student studying Game design and I'm a big fan of Mental Omega(who could have guessed)

Recently we were given the task of creating a professional animated intro sequence for an existing game of our choice, naturally the first this I asked is if we could do mods as well, and the answer was yes, so as you probably guessed again, my choice was MO.

Which leads me to why I made this Topic, I really wanted to get community feedback as I progressed with the animation, and also if i had any questions I'd have a place where i could get answers from more knowledgeable people.

Basically my pitch for the sequence will be combat between Invading Chinese forces and the Foehn, now words on a screen don't really convey how cool an idea for an animation is so hopefully I'll have a story board done by Tuesday so that everyone can get a better understanding of what it will look like.

So for my first few questions,

Is there anywhere that I can find 3D models of the Foehn and Chinese units,(I've checked Moddb and there are a few worth using but I couldn't find enough) ,this would really help when dealing with some of the more complex units such as the Megalodon its difficult to create a good representation of the unit from a small pixel reference

Is the track "Last Line of Defense" free from copy right?, I just want to make sure if I need to pay World Beyond for its rights or nah.

And last but probably most important, do i have permission to make this animation in the first place, this i suppose is mainly directed to Speeder and the devs but I had no idea how else I should go about asking them, this felt the simplest.

Here are some of the details, I'll update this as I make Progress

Time Frame : 4-5 months (I'm working by myself so it's gonna take a while lol

Current project state : conceptual/experimental.

But anyway, I hope everyone is excited as excited for this project as I am

Though, I'm not sure if late Foehn tech (such as Megalodons) can co-exist with Chinese tech (and China as an independent faction) in lore: Foehn is supposedly the last bastion of free will, while every other faction have lost their war long ago. Wouldn't it be better to make Foehn fight Epsilon instead?

As for permission, I think any mod (and even game) developer would like to see more fan art dedicated to his mod, so if it won't contradict the lore, why not?

Though, I'm not sure if late Foehn tech (such as Megalodons) can co-exist with Chinese tech (and China as an independent faction) in lore: Foehn is supposedly the last bastion of free will, while every other faction have lost their war long ago. Wouldn't it be better to make Foehn fight Epsilon instead?

Yeah, I am aware of the lore clash but I was thinking more along the lines of representing the game as one would see it during a skirmish where time line isn't a concern, not to mention although it would be more time line friendly to include the Epsilon instead they usually acquire victory through more deceptive means , (in the lore that is... brute spam tactic isn't lore friendly) ,so I feel depicting an all out assault by the Epsilon against Foehn wouldn't pair as nicely as the Soviets who's whole shtick is brute strength and attacking an opponent head on with powerful forces... but to be honest my main reason for pairing them against the Chinese is so i have an excuse to throw in some of the really cool units like the the Centurion, terror drones, Nuwa Cannons and Qilin tanks and so forth.

So unless the next team is released soon I personally feel they are the best match...

However as said above i'm always open to new ideas and we can always make changes while there is time.

Actually, Brute spam would be quite lore friendly, considering some Act 2 missions, same with the all out assault by Epsilon, seeing Juggernaut.

Good luck getting any 3D models though. I've been asking for them for a time now, got no answer, even though I'd likely have at least some sort of capability doing some CGI, considering I'm a game developer myself; though mostly a game/level designer, if I'd be a modeler, I'd need no models. :V

But anyways, I hope there'll be something coming out of this, would be curious about the results.

I'm really interested to see how this goes, the mod is in desperate need of cutscenes. Don't get me wrong, I like reading text as much as the next guy (Since I love reading novels) but some cutscenes every now and then really help the mod.

The cutscenes we have currently are more slideshows or picture animations than actual cutscenes.

What about the voice actors they got for the units that they personally voiced (And not just ripped the voices from other games)?

Maybe you could have them voice the cinematics? I mean they don't have to appear onscreen, if you want to save on making sets and props, but have voice actors say their lines over some animation sequence going on and it would be fine.

And why not accept donations? I mean, they're not gonna use it for their own financial gain.

I think MO should have more in-game voiceovers, that are also subtitled. Because currently we either have all the story play out in subtitles, or have very hard to hear voice acting without subtitles. There should be both. And maybe there could be new advisors to the player instead of reusing the old EVA voicefiles for the very limited amount of situations. Maybe using some in-house voices. Like how I suggested having the Tyrant as an Epsilon aide to the player, because it's Speeder, so you could have Speeder berating you in game how much you suck or something like that. :V

And then I'd feel once the Foehn campaign is released, the VOLKNET seems to be a character that could be used for this as well, with a readily available voice.

And why not accept donations? I mean, they're not gonna use it for their own financial gain.

Because that crosses the Gray Legality line of "Making a game based off of someone else's game without their permission", and into "We're making money off of this game that we're making off of somebody else's game without their permission, even if all we're using the money for is to fuel it back into the game."

The team wants to remain where they are in terms of legal standings, and not risk the Megalithic Titan that is EA breathing down their necks with a Cease and Desist order.

I think MO should have more in-game voiceovers, that are also subtitled. Because currently we either have all the story play out in subtitles, or have very hard to hear voice acting without subtitles. There should be both. And maybe there could be new advisors to the player instead of reusing the old EVA voicefiles for the very limited amount of situations. Maybe using some in-house voices. Like how I suggested having the Tyrant as an Epsilon aide to the player, because it's Speeder, so you could have Speeder berating you in game how much you suck or something like that. :V

And then I'd feel once the Foehn campaign is released, the VOLKNET seems to be a character that could be used for this as well, with a readily available voice.

Something like this would be cool, honestly. But it'd probably be more effort than it's worth to make new EVA voice files for the three factions.

And why not accept donations? I mean, they're not gonna use it for their own financial gain.

Because that crosses the Gray Legality line of "Making a game based off of someone else's game without their permission", and into "We're making money off of this game that we're making off of somebody else's game without their permission, even if all we're using the money for is to fuel it back into the game."

The team wants to remain where they are in terms of legal standings, and not risk the Megalithic Titan that is EA breathing down their necks with a Cease and Desist order.

Looking forward to this. On the subject of music, if you plan to use one of World Beyond's songs, you'll need to contact him directly to know what he'd prefer re his music being used. That's the safest option

Is there anywhere that I can find 3D models of the Foehn and Chinese units,(I've checked Moddb and there are a few worth using but I couldn't find enough) ,this would really help when dealing with some of the more complex units such as the Megalodon its difficult to create a good representation of the unit from a small pixel reference

The only models that we had were the ones used for the 3.0 installation screens (not sure if we still have them). Everything else has to be made from scratch.

As for voxel models, voxel editor (VXLSE) has a feature to convert voxels into textured 3d models (.obj + .mtl), although such a model will only give you the general shape and scale and won't look good enough on its own. Alternatively you can just open the voxel model and study it using 3D view of the editor. Either way you'll have to ask for these voxel models first because they are locked within mod archives.